Deeper Roots

“Storms make trees take deeper roots” –Dolly Parton

It’s been a long time.  Which sounds like the cliché beginning to every love song.  And I’m sorry about that.  I just didn’t know how else to begin after so many months of silence.  But I suppose if I’m going to return to writing regularly, I should start with a piece inspired by a Dolly Parton quote. 

I don’t always know how to restart after a long hiatus from writing. I just know I need to cleanse.  To empty my heart and soul in a different way than running my brain all night long, instead of sleeping.  Because, turns out, I need to sleep, too.

I’ve just returned from an impromptu trip to the mountains.  A 1400-mile excursion that provides me with 20 hours alone in the car, with nothing but me, the dog, and my rambling mind to keep me occupied.   And a random assortment of cds I keep stashed in the glove compartment for when I can’t handle my own noise anymore (Jay-Z and Gillian Welch…pick your poison).

As much as I’ve come to love Baltimore over the last twelve years, there still is something magical about hitting the road, and heading south towards the mountains.  Maybe they just make me feel safe, or comfortable.  The drive through the Shenandoah Valley is just the teaser, as I wind my way down through Virginia, and creep in the side door of Tennessee.  When I hit that North Carolina line in Madison County, I frequently force myself to stop at the “scenic pullover” stops, designed for tourists, but used most frequently by this used-to-be-local-girl.  To take a deep breath.  And look at the panorama of mountains that surround me on all sides.  It’s truly breathtaking.  Most likely the first true “pause” I’ve taken in weeks.  And I feel it in my heart.  This deep pang that could almost be mistaken as arrhythmia or heartburn or some other ailment; but I know better.  

The mountains are home.  In a small valley wedged between the lavender purple and deep blue hills, where I spent the first 18 years of my life.  Those hills are filled with people who make my heart complete; my sisters, my family, my friends.  And though a trip home is rarely quiet, or uneventful, they’re always full.  Full of life.  And love.  And little kid hugs.  And usually cupcakes.  And probably BBQ.

The last few years have felt particularly complicated.   Between the health of my family and my close friends, and truthfully my own health, and the seemingly never ending string of national and international tragedies that seem to rock my very core, I’ve been having those cyclical conversations with God.  The ones where you challenge what else could possibly be added to your plate (which is always the cue for just a few more things, which is basically just a cruel trick to remind us that we really are stupidly strong and capable of handling pretty much most things that come our way; one of those life lessons that I’d frankly rather put on a poster and hang in my office instead of “living through it”, but whatever, I’ll bring that up with God later). 

And in the last few months, I suppose I’ve found myself somewhere between overwhelmed and incredibly grateful and blessed.  Another trip to West Africa.  Some new challenges and new opportunities.  Another semester down and grad school is all but under my belt, and I seem to have survived it all with minimal scarring.  Which is proof for me that God still listens to my prayers, even if I haven’t been his best advocate over the years. 

And as we just wrapped up another commencement, and I’ve said my tearful goodbyes to another incredibly amazing class of young people ready to take on the world, I’m finding myself feeling reflective.  And emotional.  And perhaps a tad bit vulnerable.

I turned 30 this year.  Which is one of those things you think about almost every day of your twenties.  Like the ticking clock in Peter Pan.  And then all the sudden it happens, and really nothing earth-shattering occurs.  Except I do feel a bit more comfortable in my skin.  And maybe I feel a bit more ready for what the world will throw at me.  The anxiousness and nervousness of my twenties, and the looming sense of not being “good enough”, has all but subsided.   And I’m hitting this interesting little stride in my life that I don’t want to preemptively label as confidence in myself, or trust, but maybe they’re the little saplings of those words.  Just starting to take root and grow.

I’m learning life is hard and unfair.  The Rolling Stones didn’t lie to me.  It doesn’t always let up, just because it should.  And I can’t always get what I want. 

And I get tired.  Which perhaps is easier to admit now that I’m thirty.  Partially because I love the work I do so deeply, that I actually find myself with heartache.  And frustration.  And aspiration.  Like actually being in love.  And partially because its hard work.  Maybe not hard like lifting heavy things all day, or hard like being a school teacher.  But there are endless conversations about how to be better people, and how to really create change.  How to look at the world with new eyes, and see new possibilities.  Work that requires the brain to be in connection with the heart.   And lots of flip-chart paper.

But also I’m tired because I have had too many burners burning.  Too many big things going at once.  Which gets exhausting.  Juggling and peddling at the same time. 

I haven’t really allowed myself the space to process all the tragedy that has happened this year.  The world we live in that seems to get nuttier by the minute.

Generally when terrible things happen, my guttural reaction is to get in my car and drive to North Carolina and squeeze the faces of my nieces and nephews until they know, in their deepest cores, that they are loved so hard by so many people (okay, especially me, I’m a little bit obnoxious about being their “favorite”).  Or to build an impenetrable bubble for all four of them to live inside and give it to them for Christmas next year so that I never have to think about something happening to their innocence.  Their sweet smiles.  Their goofy moments of ultimate silliness.   But driving home isn’t always an option.  So I settle for a phone call, or a quick text message.  A connection.

Because I’m deeply troubled by what this world holds for them.   And not just them, but all of my students.  All of my “kids” (most of whom are indeed over 18, and are, for all intensive purposes, considered “adults”, unless I’m talking, in which case they’re absolutely my “kids”).

Especially just after graduation, just as we begin to release, I want to be able to explain it to them.

I want them to understand why it is so complicated.  Why things aren’t always just black and white.  Or good and bad.  That as much as I’d like to dream of a simpler world for them, sometimes the complicatedness of our humanity is our greatest weight and asset.  And that there is beauty embedded in what is difficult to understand.

Through some of the darkest times, we humans seem to find our greatest strengths. The journey through the dark and complicated can deepen our roots, and challenge our assumptions.  And it can also leave us scared.  And raw.  And confused.  And sometimes we just have to live that pain for a bit, until it gets better.

Through our struggles, we uncover unlikely communities, friends, and connections.

I want them to understand that the human capacity to make mistakes, and also to forgive, is a wondrous fact of life.  That our bodies and hearts have the ability to heal.  To transform.  To adapt.   But that we are also vulnerable to pain.  And heartache.  And suffering.  And that vulnerability is where we do our best growing.

Sometimes it won’t be so easy to understand what to do next.  The decisions won’t always be simple.  It’s a delicate dance with the line.  A fine piece of thread pulled taut between right and wrong.  Okay and not okay.  An infinite line; pulsing, moving, under the constant pressure of life.  And it will be stressful sometimes, but that they aren’t doing anything wrong.  In fact, it means they’re doing it right.  

Things will happen that we can’t explain.  And that sometimes life can feel really unfair.  But that it all happens in balance.  And when you’re lucky, you have to remember just how lucky you are.  And be grateful. 

Humility is not just a word.  It is something you must learn.  It is hard.  It takes work.  But it pays off.  Being honest.  Being willing to be wrong.  Open to the discovery.  Prepared to let someone else win sometimes.  Prepared that others might see something differently, and that you might both still be right. 

There are some basics, though.  You should be nice to people.  Be kind.  Be generous of heart and spirit.  And no promises, but generally, the scales will always try to tilt back to some kind of equilibrium.  The good days will counter the bad.  But it will take patience.  And genuine bull-headedness.  And sometimes the formula won't work.

But maybe these are things that you can only learn as you go.  Perhaps my desire to protect them won't really change anything, other than remind them that they're loved.  Because some things only make sense as you live it.  And survive it.  Storms make trees take deeper roots.  

Dolly’s always right.

Becoming

This is my commencement post.  Which isn’t entirely just for those who have recently graduated, but a “commencement post” because commencement has just passed and left me feeling particularly reflective.  And emotional.  And frankly a little unstable.  So this is a post about life.  And about the future.  And about how really no one knows what’s coming next.  And how to keep moving forward even when everything in your body tells you to sit down.

I’ve had a lot of “those” conversations over the last few weeks.  With anxious students just beginning to think about what happens when you leave the nest of college.  Those hard conversations about “what-ifs” and “where-do-I-gos”.  Riddled with insecurity that it will be too hard, too complicated, or too big to manage.   Fretting over the big leap.  The journey.  It.  Life.  The not knowing of where you’ll land or what it’ll take to get to where you’re going (if you’ve already determined you have a final destination). 

These conversations always loop me back to my own journey, thinking about my own choices and adventures, and the many hard and beautiful paths I’ve found myself on in my 29 years of life.  Like a Grateful Dead song.  What a long strange trip it’s been.  Indeed.

I don’t know much about life.  But I watch it happen all the time.  All around me.  Life in abundance.  And I know that we all have in us the capacity to survive it.  

I read The Sun, an independent journal packed to the brims with good writing, stunning poetry, beautiful black and white photography, and interesting interviews with people I’ve never heard of (which is a great change of pace from my other “journal”, UsWeekly).  This month they interview a painter, Ran Ortner, who paints incredibly large and emotional seascape pieces.  In answering why he paints the ocean, he shares: “It wasn’t until I read Thomas Merton that I came upon something that helped me.  He wrote that there’s nothing as old and as tiresome as human novelty; there’s nothing as immediate and as new as that which is most ancient, which is always in the process of becoming.”

There is nothing as immediate and as new as that which is most ancient, which is always in the process of becoming.  Wow.  How profound, Mr. Merton.  Even though Ortner relates the quote to the ocean, and the ocean’s infinitival presence, this line jumped out of the magazine and practically hit me in the head.

Like the ocean, we humans are in a constant state of becoming.  Of finding things about our soul and our minds that are brand new, all the time, while our bodies physically remain the same.  Our bones and cells unchanged by the choices we make, while our values and our belief systems grow stout and heavy with ideas.   Only as we age do we begin to show the scars from our battles.  The lines from our laughter.  The stretch marks from our gracious giving.  And even these changes are slight.  We remain, at our core, the same DNA.  The same cellular structures.  Our hearts still pump blood through our veins.  Our skin softens, our hair thins, but we remain the same person.

So when people get all panicky right before a big change, there is validity to it.   Change requires growing.  And allowing new patterns to develop.  And requires the emotional capacity and space to rebuild something for yourself, no matter how many times you’ve built it before, or perhaps never at all.  There is a truth to our fear of the unknown.  A bittersweet knowledge that growing up is hard work.  Growing into your skin and your voice and your body can be a beautiful, painful growth.  Learning your limitations.  Identifying your weaknesses.  Discovering your strengths.  Allowing yourself to see your own beauty.  All a process of growing up that doesn’t magically end at 18 or 22, 25 or even 45.

There is no mysterious point where the universe says, “to whom it may concern, just as a reminder, you haven’t accomplished x, y, or z, so here is a list of things you need to accomplish to get there. love, the universe.”  Nope.  Frankly, you’re lucky if you ever hear the universe talk at all.  Life is too noisy.  People are too loud.  The silent nuances of the earth get lost.  The cue that the rain is coming or the weather pattern is changing.  All signs that should help us make choices, hidden between concrete beltways and planned communities.

But our world is what it is.  With all its failing systems and warts and flaws, we still live in a beautiful world and in an incredible space in time where anything can happen.  Where there is so much possibility.  And we have all the tools we need to figure it out.  And yet there are aspects of our humanity—of our simple breathing and aging—that will always make things harder.  Because despite being so simple, we humans are capable of great complications.  We don’t always speak our truths.  Sometimes we don’t try hard enough.  We make bad choices.  We get greedy.  And we ladle in grief and illness and it can all feel huge.  Impenetrable.  

But the mediocrity of it all is part of being human.  It’s falling for the gimmick.  Getting your heart broken (as many times as it takes).  Being disappointed.  Falling in love with the wrong person.  Accepting a job that isn’t work you love, but just helps you pay the bills.  Working really hard and still not seeing any change.  Meeting people you hate.  Fighting with your siblings.  Or your parents.  Or your friends.  Misunderstanding each other’s words.   Misunderstanding each other’s body language.  Falling apart.  Getting in trouble.  Making those painful choices where there really is no good side.  No silver lining.

And part of growing up is also about recovery.  Finding the strength and grace inside that unchangeable body to move beyond what hurts in the immediate.  Remembering that our bodies cannot be purged by our emotions.  Discovering the things you shouldn’t ever do again.  Learning what you love to do.  Creating a home for yourself, when it feels like you have no where else to go.  Finding people to be with who become your family.  Thoughtful, kind people who love you no matter what.  People who create a web of love and support and honesty for you and who allow you to grow with them, even in the darkest spaces.  Apologizing.  Accepting responsibility. 

And when you find yourself in a place where everything has fallen apart, taking the time to locate the pieces of your life you want to bring back again and slowly putting them back together.  Even if it takes a slightly different shape than before.  Learning to make do with what you have.  Appreciating the simple things.  Learning the things you can do and have a great time without spending any money at all.

It’s about understanding the patterns we live.  Understanding that every action has a reaction and learning how to manage that.  How to be responsible with that pattern.  How to not take too much from others.  The process of learning how to filter our words and our actions so that we don’t unintentionally push people away from us.  Even strangers.  Even people on the other side of the world. 

Discovering our happy places.  The places that renew us.  The people who restore us.  The spaces that allow us to just be without needing to explain ourselves.  Our safe houses.  Where nothing can touch us, even if only for one day.  Or one hour.

It’s about learning that big ideas like justice and sustainability are more than just helping someone through a rough spot or recycling your cans—they’re about people and relationships and building community.  About connecting to people from different places and learning from each other about what could be.  About what should be.  About doing the dirty work of working through decades of ignorance and misunderstanding.  About rebuilding new paths towards justice.  Acknowledging our sources of privilege and power and learning how to use those to make the world a better place for everyone, not just ourselves.

It’s about listening more than you talk.  Learning to watch for those beautiful silent signs we send to each other with our bodies and our voices and our eyes.  And being aware of the way we communicate back with the world.  Learning to adapt.  Learning to accommodate.  Learning how to say I’m sorry in a sincere way.

And when we’re in those tight spots.  Those dark afternoons that seem like they’ll go on forever.  Those moments where it feels like you’ll never feel better.  You’ll never wake up (or you don’t want to).  You’ll never stop aching.  We have to remember that it always changes.  It always gets better.  If we let it.  If we allow it.  If we’re willing to work on it.  If we’re willing to admit our dark secrets to someone.

Learning to be honest can be the hardest part of it all.  Learning how to say the things no one wants to hear.  Or the things you yourself don’t even want to hear out loud.  Being open to the idea that we all make bad choices sometimes.  We all do it: we ignore all the signals and the people telling us “no”, “stop”, “don’t do it”, and do what we want, when we want, and sometimes that doesn’t end well.  But that it’s just like everything else.  There is always a way out of it.  There is a gradual process of rebuilding.  Reconnecting.  Repairing.

It’s about perspective.  Realizing that we’re constantly in a state of becoming.  Even when we think we’re finished.

Resolutions

I suppose late January is a tad late for real resolutions.  The truly dedicated and focused resolutionaries (like revolutionaries, but more focused) starting working on their lists of things to resolve back in November, allowing December for tweaking, editing, and reflection, and published that sucker at midnight December 31^st, 2011 so that January 1^st, 2012 could start with a bang and genuine determination.  They checked box one.  Two. Three.  And by now they’ve already lost 10 pounds and said “I’m sorry” to at least five people.  And probably sponsored a starving child in Somalia.  Or something.

Which would be awesome if that’s how my brain worked.  But it doesn’t.  And that’s okay.  And at least I’m self-aware of that, much to the detriment of my highly-focused and hyper-organized friends and colleagues.  Instead, I’ve somehow survived the first month of 2012, in my rogue state of dis-resolve.   I also have invented at least three words already in this post, and am likely to invent at least three more.  Which is also okay.


I'll start this rambling self-indulgent post with an existential idea:  In the first few weeks of 2012, I’ve come to recognize that time is nothing but numbers, cells, memories, life, air, nouns, action verbs, and breathing.  2012 has also started with chronic tonsillitis and an ear infection, which has perhaps influenced my judgement.  Allow me to re-focus.  Here's what I hate about January: bacterial infections and resolutions.

The thing is, resolutions are basically goals, wrapped in guilt and laced with reflections on bad choices made in “previous lives”.  I always joke that I don’t believe in goals, which is only partially true.  I do believe in some goals.  Like I want to be rich.  And go to Africa always.  And do work I love.  And be happy.  And get access to Rachel Zoe’s accessories closet.  (Oh, and marry George Clooney, which is less of a goal and more of a challenge).  But I do kind of find myself fighting against the norms of things I “should” do.  Especially if I “should” do them because I’ve already done whatever it is I “should stop” doing, and have already learned that whatever it was didn’t kill me, or hurt me (well, not that I can SEE anyway), made me feel awesome, but is socially unacceptable (bacon-wrapped jalapenos, stuffed with cheese, por ejemplo).

Other examples:

1. I refuse to work out in January because I should.  If I work out in January, it’s because I want to.   It’s never for health.  Ever.
2. I refuse to give up smoking or cursing or drinking because I should.  If I give up smoking or cursing or drinking, it’s because I want to.  Or because I'm dying and they told me I had to.
3. I refuse to stop eating butter on my bread, cooking with bacon grease, or eating red-meat, gluten, or lactose because I should.  If I give up those things, check my pulse.  I’ve probably died.

I just read this great book for a community book discussion at work, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  The book is actually intended for young adults, is super-short, and a really quick read if you haven’t read it yet.  Technically, I think I still fit in the young adult category, in the same way I still think I can buy accessories from the junior’s section of Nordstrom.  The book is sweet and poignant.  A tale of a young man growing up.  We readers watch him struggle with his racial identity as he transfers schools and battles adolescence.  We watch him grapple with grief and manage the addictions of those around him.  The story made me laugh, cry, and smile.  Mostly, it made me remember my own struggles and quiet accomplishments in childhood.  Not because I was quiet (ever), but because growing up is sort of this silent process that just happens.  And before you know it you’ve traveled all these miles and covered all this ground (and blown out all of these candles) and your accomplishments start to pile up, quietly.  Serenely.  Unostentatiously.  Parts of it are loud and glaring and ostentatious.  But others, almost silent.

In looking back at high school, and middle school, I mostly remember the anxiety of it all.  While I was a very lucky kid, with many blessings, I, like most people, had my fair share of loss and tragedy.  These years are hard for everyone—some more than others.  I’ve never met someone who doesn’t reflect on middle school and high school with a kind of warrior-like stance, almost congratulating themselves on surviving those years, and reflecting on how many times something really bad could have happened, or perhaps, did. 

I remember sitting around with my friends, something we did a lot of in a small mountain town with little else to do but sit and think and talk and watch and laugh, trying to imagine what the world held for us.  We’d spend our summers in the rivers, chasing tadpoles and leaping off waterfalls, trying to imagine what the rest of it would be like.  It.  Life.  I had wild dreams about the kind of person I would become someday.  When I grew up.  Words that make me laugh now.  Grow up.  When does that happen, anyway?  We’d be architects and teachers and artists.  Doctors and lawyers.  And obviously, writers for SNL.  Because we assumed we were the funniest teenagers on earth (and we might have been).

For most of us, these dreams were largely shaped by characters in movies and television shows that we compulsively watched because we had nothing better to do respected.  I was that teenager who, rather than watching the forbidden early days of MTV or Jerry Springer (which I also watched, don’t be fooled), watched black and white movies from the 40s and old episodes of SNL over and over again, memorizing to heart the humor of greats like Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin.  And the newly emerging names—Molly Shannon, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey.   Chris Farley.  Phil Hartman.  Tracy Morgan.  My friends.  (They understood me better than most).

Because of the movies I watched, and the people I idolized, naturally, I assumed my first car would be a Scout.  Like Sandra Bullock in Hope Floats or Renee Zellweger in Empire Records (movies, and women, who defined what it meant to be young and female in the 1990’s).  I envisioned my Scout would be red.  And old and rusted in just the coolest of places.  I’d cover it in bumper stickers, ensuring that everyone in our small, largely conservative town would know I was liberal, pro-choice, and really interested in world peace (or whirled peas, because I was also very clever).  I’d wear my homemade tie-dye, and my overalls, and look shabby chic awesome all the time (and not like a chubby-Asheville-lesbian).

Before I understood anything about Sallie Mae or Toyota Financing Services, I imagined my future professional life would be some blend of Flora Poste from Cold Comfort Farm, Laney Boggs from She’s All That (before she got all de-geeked and prom-queened), and Amelie Poulain from, well, duh, Amelie.  And I’d be the mountain version of all of those women mixed together in a very Gillian Welch kind of way.  I’d travel the world.  And write stories.  And be published by twenty.  I’d have an art studio in the mountains and a cabin by the sea.  I’d paint.  And reupholster furniture.  And have a pottery studio.  I’d be smart, wispy, artistic, and unbelievably likable.  I’d be pretty in that way that everyone says, wow she just woke up like that.  Unbelievable.   

I’d drive around the windy mountain roads in my Scout, in my tie-dye, collecting junk from trash heaps, taking it to my art studio, magically transforming it into something from Anthropologie, and sell it for $2,500 to rich tourists who wanted folk art.  Half of which I would donate to Sierra Club.  Or Planned Parenthood.  Because you know, money didn’t make me lose my values.

Or maybe I’d move to New York and become best friends with everyone from SNL.  And become the funniest woman alive.  And be filthy rich and marry George Clooney.

Or maybe I’d go to art school.  Or architecture school.  Or medical school.  And become a pediatrician in rural African villages.

And I actually thought all of these things, and a million other dreams that were equally as elaborate and ridiculous and filled with “what-ifs” and “then-I’ll-bes” and “after-that-I’ll-gos”.  Dreaming on the side of a rock next to a river in Western North Carolina.  Because being a kid is all about dreaming.  And trying on different people’s shoes and shirts and pants (or skirts).  And trying to find who you are in the sea of all the choices of what you can be.  And negotiating the choices you don’t have—your race, your gender, your sexuality, your zip code—with the choices you do have—are you kind, are you generous, are you fair.  Are you a good person.  Do you brake for squirrels.

And the older I get, the more I recognize that my wants in life are fairly simple, despite my growing taste for couture.  I don't need it to be so fussy.  I just need it to be functional.  And happy.

One of my sisters recently moved to the mountains with her husband and daughter, and despite the fact that they had to fight snakes out of their walls before they could move in and don’t have cell phone coverage anywhere near their home, I’m actually quite jealous of the simplicity of the choice they’ve made.  Of the life my niece will have growing up on her very own patch of mountain.  Learning rules and cues from nature and from rivers and even snakes in the grass.  Of the opportunities she’ll have to learn about how powerful those mountains are in grounding our spirits and growing our wings.  Us mountain girls know secrets about the world that others don’t know.  And I feel confident they’ll be whispered to her while she sits in her backyard and dreams about what the world holds for her someday.

And here in 2012, I drive a Toyota.  Not a Scout.  And if I had money, I’d probably drive a Lexus SUV (hybrid, duh).  And while I do have overalls, they make me look pregnant and I only wear them when I’m house-painting.  Or if I get up really early for the farmer’s market in the hottest parts of summertime.  And I have my old tie-dye tucked away in a drawer, but every time I wear it someone cracks a Bob Marley joke and asks me to pass the bowl.   I ditched pre-med freshman year because I discovered my social life (and my real life calling, urban education).  And somewhere between 1995 and 2012, I discovered Marc Jacobs.  And Michael Kors.  And conflict-free diamond jewelry.  Which means that my ideas of being a crafty mountain woman went down the drain when I discovered quilted leather and couture.  Plus I moved to Baltimore and there is totally NOT a market here for mountain folk art.  And I’m not married.  And I don’t have babies (that I’ve birthed, although I have many that I’ve claimed as partially mine).  And I do work that fulfills me.  I’m proud of my education.  Even if it means I’ll likely turn 30 without a husband.  Or a baby on my hip.  And these things are all okay.   

And if I had made resolutions in November, and edited them in December, this might be what they’d look like:

• To spend more time with my family and friends.  Nothing is more important than those you love.
• To spend more time doing the things I love—reading newspapers, writing, and creating art.
• To travel freely, without schedules.  To explore as I can, when I can.  To meet new people.  Be nice.  Learn from others.  And that it's totally acceptable to get lost on purpose.
• To choose to be quiet more often.  To watch and listen more.  Talk less.
• To keep it simple, stupid.
• To walk the dog more.
• Okay, okay.  To probably STOP eating cookies for breakfast.  Whatever.